you."

"Shan't we walk a little?" she remembered she had asked after a while.
"We can have the carriages wait; or do you feel strong enough? I
forgot--"

But he interrupted her, protesting his fitness.

"The doctor merely sent me out to get the air, and it's humiliating to
be wheeled about like an old woman."

Lloyd passed the reins back of her to Lewis, and, gathering her skirts
about her, started to descend from the phaeton. The step was rather high
from the ground. Ferriss stood close by. Why did he not help her? Why
did he stand there, his hands in his pockets, so listless and
unconscious of her difficulty. A little glow of irritation deepened the
dull crimson of her cheeks. Even returned Arctic explorers could not
afford to ignore entirely life's little courtesies--and he of all men.

"Well," she said, expectantly hesitating before attempting to descend.

Then she caught Ferriss's eyes fixed upon her. He was smiling a little,
but the dull, stupefied expression of his face seemed for a brief
instant to give place to one of great sadness. He raised a shoulder
resignedly, and Lloyd, with the suddenness of a blow, remembered that
Ferriss had no hands.

She dropped back in the seat of the phaeton, covering her eyes, shaken
and unnerved for the moment with a great thrill of infinite pity--of
shame at her own awkwardness, and of horror as for one brief instant the
smiling summer park, the afternoon's warmth, the avenue of green,
over-arching trees, the trim, lacquered vehicles and glossy-brown horses
were struck from her mind, and she had a swift vision of the Ice, the
darkness of the winter night, the lacerating, merciless cold, the
blinding, whirling, dust-like snow.

For half an hour they walked slowly about in the park, the carriages
following at a distance. They did not talk very much. It seemed to Lloyd
that she would never tire of scrutinising his face, that her interest in
his point of view, his opinions, would never flag. He had had an
experience that came but to few men. For four years he had been out of
the world, had undergone privation beyond conception. What now was to be
his attitude? How had he changed? That he had not changed to her Lloyd
knew in an instant. He still loved her; that was beyond all doubt. But
this terrible apathy that seemed now to be a part of him! She had heard
of the numbing stupor that invades those who stay beyond their time in
the Ice, but never before had she seen it in its